F 104 
. S55 R7 
^opy 1 




QUAKER HILL 

( LOCAL HISTOKY) 

SERIES 



xviL l)i$torical Candmarks 

tn tbc 



Cown of SDerman 



BY 

RUTH ROGERS 



HISTORICAL 
LAN DMARKS 

IN THE 

TOWN OF SHERMAN 

CONNECTICUT 



BY 

RUTH ROGERS 



READ AT THE EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 

QUAKER HILL CONFERENCE. SEPTEMBER THE 

SEVENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX. 



Published by the Quaker Hill Conference Association 

Quaker Hill, New York 

1907 



Publications 

Of the Quaker Hii,i, Conference Association 



, A Critical Study of the Bible, by the Rev, Newton M, 

' Hall of Springfield, Mass. 

Tlie Relation of the Church at Home to the Church 
Abroad, by Rev. Geotge William Knox, D.D., of New York. 

A Tenable Theory of Biblical Inspiration, by Prof. 
Irving Francis Wood, Ph.D., of Northampton, Mass. 

The Book Farmer, by Edward H, Jenkins, Ph.D., of 
New Haven, Conn. 

LOCAL HISTORY SERIES 

David Irish— A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. Phoebe 
T. Wanzer of Quaker Hill, N, Y. 

Quaker Hill in the Eig:hteenth Century, by Rev. Warren 
^ H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. 

J. Quaker Hill in the Nineteenth Century, by Rev. Warren 

^ H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Second Edition). 

Hiram B. Jones and His School, by Rev. Edward 1,. 
Chichester of Quaker Hill, N. Y. 

Richard Osborn— A Reminiscence, by Margaret B. Mon- 
ahan of Quaker Hill, N. Y. (Second Edition). 

Albert J. Al<in— A Tribute, by Rev. Warren H. Wilson of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Ancient Homes and Early Days at Quaker Hill, by 

' ^ Amanda Akin Stearns of Quaker Hill, N. Y. 

Thomas Taber and Edward Shove— a Reminiscence, by 

Rev. Benjamin Shove of New York. 

Some Qlimpses of the Past, by Alicia Hopkins Taber of 
Pawling, N. Y. 

The Purchase Meeting, by James Wood of Mt. Kisco, 
N. Y. 

In Loving Remembrance of Attn Hayes, by Mrs. Warren 
H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. • -^ 

Washington's Headquar'tbrs at Fredericksburgh, by 

lycwis S. Patrick of Marinette, Wis. 



^'■\ 



Historical Landmarks in the Town of Sherman, by 

Ruth Rogers, Sherman, Conn. 

Any one of these publications may be had by addressing 
the Secretary, Rev. Bertram A. Warren, 

Quaker Hill. N.Y. 
Price Ten Cents. Twelve Cents Postpaid. 



am 



\ 



HISTORICAL LANDMARKS IN THE 
TOWN OF SHERMAN. 

Do you know Dr. van Dyke's picture of 
the valley home of Peace? It makes you 
think of Sherman, for in Sherman you 
may find just such little gardens, and many 

"a sheltered nook, 
With outlooks brief and sweet 
Across the meadows and along the brook ;" 

here, too are the little, quiet, glad-flowing 
streams, and the little fields, that bear 

"a. little wheat 
To make a portion of earth's a'aily bread. ' 

In this ''green and still retreat" there have 
been no great battles fought, nor martial 
trumpets blown, yet there has been much of 
the quieter heroism which is strong for the 
daily task or the rare emergency. The 
men who lived here in the long ago were 
men of strong character, pure purpose, and 
clean life, men in whose record their chil- 
dren's children rejoice. Some there were 
who made their impress on the outside 
world ; merchant and missionary, soldier 
and statesman, professor and physician, col- 
lege founder and clergyman, have gone out 
from Sherman. Others were content to do 
the lowly task and ''wait in patience till its 
slow reward is won," making history in 



their quiet daily life; and we who come 
after them are quite as proud of the patriot 
ancestors who stayed at home and milked 
the cows and raised the grain as of the men 
who made us Daughters of the Revolution. 

It is well for us that we know something 
of our forefathers, for the burning of the 
early town records sends us to family and 
church chronicles for the beginnings of our 
history. From outside sources also we can 
glean much. 

Thus the history of the Naugatuck In- 
dians and the annals of the Moravian Mis- 
sionaries reveal the story of Mauwehu, the 
Indian sachem who dwelt in Potatuck, now 
Newtown, and who claimed much land west 
of the Housatonic River, including what is 
now Quaker Hill and Sherman. In 1729 he 
and twelve other chiefs signed the deed 
granting to the colonists for the sum of 
sixty-five pounds the territory between Dan- 
bury and the Litchfield County line. 
Mauwehu and his people moved, about the 
same year, to the Indian settlement at 
Schaghticoke, where some of his lineal 
descendants still remain. Converted by the 
Moravian missionaries and baptized Gideon, 
he preached the Gospel to his own people 
by precept and example, and the testimony 
of the times bears witness to his rare wis- 
dom, superior intellect, and strong, find 
character. Of the days of Mauwehu and his 
fathers some reminders still remain. Ar- 
rowheads found even yet in the furrow, 
stone pestles occasionally picked up, and 
mortars hollowed out of rock, tell of the 



days when the Indian hunted deer in our 
woodlands and his dusky squaw raised and 
made ready the maize for his eating. On 
West Street the legendary Indian Rocks are 
seen, carved no doubt by the rude tools and 
skilled fingers of the red man; while an 
Indian grave on Green Pond Mountain has 
been guarded a century or two by a monu- 
ment of many stones, built up, one stone 
at a time, by every Indian who passed by. 
Yet perhaps the Indian's most lasting legacy 
is in the musical names lingering yet upon 
brook and river and valley; for as long as 
the Wimisink and the Naromiyocknowhu- 
sunkatankshunk wind toward the Housa- 
tonic, their quaint appellations will recall 
the red man's trouting days, and as long 
as people live in the part of the town called 
Coburn, the name of the old Indian who 
once dwelt there will be upon the white 
man's lips. In the new Lake Mauwehu we 
shall have yet another reminder of the do- 
minion of the red man and of the splendid 
old chief whose title was the first to our 
well-loved hills and valleys. 

In the records of the General Assembly 
holden at New Haven in 1707, we find the 
names of eleven men of the town of Fair- 
field, praying for a certain tract of land to 
be for a township lying north of and near 
to Danbury, "bounded westerly on the 
colonic line." Fear of the Indians or some 
misunderstanding about the exact terms 
put off the settlement for thirty years after 
the petition was granted, and it was not un- 



til 1736 or 1737 that a final survey and 
allotment of rights were made. 

About the time, then, that the pilgrims 
from Dartmouth came riding their horses 
all the long way to Quaker Hill, a little 
company of men and women from old 
Fairfield on the shore journeyed up to the 
little New Fairfield, as yet unnamed, how- 
ever, lying on the westerly colonic line. 
The new township was fourteen miles long, 
and the settlers divided it into two sections, 
called Upper and Lower Seven Miles ; in 
each section they speedily organized a 
church. 

For sixty years the men of the north and 
the south voted together and were one 
township ; but they found it not always con- 
venient, in those days of poor roads, few 
wagons, and no telephones, to do business 
with fellow citizens fourteen miles away, 
and in 1802 the people of the Upper Seven 
Miles petitioned the legislature to set ofT 
the north end as a separate town. Long 
was the debate over a name for the new 
township, until one day Representative 
Graves arose in the Assembly and moved 
that it be named for Roger Sherman, who 
once had his shoe shop within our borders. 
Immediate and unanimous approval greeted 
the suggestion and the little town received 
the name which is its pride. 

Roger Sherman came as a young man 
to the home of his brother, William Sher- 
man, near the northern border line of upper 
New Fairfield. Here he lived for a little 
while and made and mended shoes, for he 



combined the shoemaker's trade with the 
surveyor's, and was evidently master of 
both. The story of his shoemaking fol- 
lowed him to Congress, and was used in 
ridicule by one of his fellow members, Ran- 
dolph of Virginia, whose great pride was 
his descent from Pocahontas. In a debate 
one day, Mr. Randolph, objecting to some- 
thing Roger Sherman had said, ironically 
asked : 

"What has the gentleman from Con- 
necticut done with his leather apron?" 

Whereupon Roger Sherman answered 
with unmoved dignity: 

''Cut it up to make moccasins for the 
descendants of Pocahontas !" 

By the way, Edward Everett Hale has 
apparently not heard this bit of quick- 
wittedness, for he seems almost to doubt 
the shoe-making story. *'They say,*' he 
wrote not long ago, ''dear Roger Sherman 
was a shoemaker. I do not know, but I do 
know that every central suggestion in the 
American Constitution, 'the wisest work of 
men's hands that was ever struck off in so 
short a time,' is the suggestion of this shoe- 
maker, Roger Sherman." 

Roger Sherman moved from upper New 
Fairfield to New Milford and afterward to 
New Haven. He was the only man who 
helped to draft the four great documents of 
our national history — the Declaration of 
Rights, Declaration of Independence, Ar- 
ticles of Confederation, and the Constitu- 
tion. In the Constitutional Convention at 
the close of the Revolution, when the As- 



sembly seemed on the point of going to 
pieces in a storm of controversy, Roger 
Sherman and his fellow members from Con- 
necticut came forward with the proposition 
known as the Connecticut Compromise, 
which saved the Constitution and made pos- 
sible a federal government. Of Roger 
Sherman, Thomas Jefferson said: "There 
is a man who never said a foolish thing." 
The building on the Jonathan Giddings 
homestead, by the Wimisink brook, which 
is said to have been Roger Sherman's shoe 
shop, is typical of the rest of our land- 
marks, standing not so much for hours of 
dazzling triumph as for days of simple duty 
rightly done. 

Between the granting and the settling of 
the New Fairfield township, the strip of 
land known as the Oblong, which was in- 
cluded in the original grant, had been ceded 
to New York State in exchange for the 
seacoast land called Horseneck, and Con- 
necticut lost her claim to Quaker Hill. Yet 
something more than mere propinquity en- 
tered into the bond between Quaker Hill 
and Sherman in the years that followed. 
There was easy and natural communication 
between the two places, connected as they 
were by the old turnpike to Poughkeepsie. 
To the store on the Hill, kept in Revolu- 
tionary days by Daniel Merritt, and after- 
ward by James Craft, Sherman people 
came for groceries. Especially at the 
Thanksgiving season, so many customers 
mounted the hill that the storekeeper knew 
beyond a doubt the Yankees were going to 

8 



keep Thanksgiving. ''Sugar and spice and 
all things nice," they carried home with 
them, particularly tea, for Quaker Hill tea 
had a high reputation. 

Moreover, there were excellent families 
just over the Yankee border line who paid 
no military tax, used the plain speech, and 
wore the quiet colors. To the old Meeting 
House on meeting days they turned their 
faces, and in the burial plot yonder some 
of them were laid to rest. 

In at least one of these households over 
the line lingers a happy childhood memory 
of bright August days and the 

"Cavalcade as of pilgrims, 
Men and women, wending their way to the quar- 
terly meeting 
In the neighboring town." 

Here were friends and relatives among 
the pilgrims, and the people stopped as at 
the house of Elizabeth in Longfellow's 
poem, for rest and refreshment. The com- 
ing of the aunts and uncles and cousins, 
and the festal preparations for dinner after 
meeting was over, must have made the 
Quaker Quarterly almost equivalent to the 
Puritan Thanksgiving, in the households 
nearest the meeting house. 

It is also a family over the line, which 
was, like most of the Quaker Hill families, 
of Dartmouth descent, that preserves the 
tradition of the first pair of boots on 
Quaker Hill. The boots, being a proof of 
particular prosperity, were borrowed in 
turn by every man who went back to Dart- 



mouth to visit. The owner of the boots is 
not positively remembered, but is believed, 
rather mistily, to have been Peter Akin. 
Peter Akin must have had large and gen- 
erous feet, or else the Quaker Hill pioneers 
must all have worn the same size of foot- 
wear. At least he bad a large and generous 
heart, for few men would have been willing 
to lend thus freely their cherished treas- 
ures. Generosity and goodwill belong to 
the Quaker, however, in nothing more evi- 
dent than in his gracious, tender treatment 
of friend and family. Very sweet is the 
beautiful care of the Quaker for his beloved 
wife, so apparent in copies of the last will 
and testament that have come down to us. 
From large things to little, the same loving 
thoughtfulness is manifest, whether it is the 
legacy of bank stock, the good cow, the 
''beast of horse kind and sadle and bridle,'* 
''the youse of the pleaser carage during her 
nateral life," or the careful provision for 
the accommodation of her friends when they 
come to visit her, for the son's "assisting 
his mother to and from meeting and to go 
visiting," even for the furnishing of wood 
cut and fitted for her fire. 

A house still to be seen in Leach Hollow 
brings back the picturesque story of one of 
these Yankee Quakers of Revolutionary 
days, John Leach. His doctrine of non- 
resistance was misunderstood, and attempts 
were made to arrest him as a Tory. It was 
going hard with Connecticirt Tories in those 
days, and John Leach, not cari»g to risk 
an interview with the authorities, disap- 



10 



peared. It is believed that he was concealed 
in a nearby cave and that his wife, known 
as Aunt Molly, carried him food in the 
ni«-ht-time. When the searchers came, 
thSugh they held their pistols at her head, 
the plucky wife refused to give up her 
secret, and her husband escaped mto Can- 
ada, where he stayed till the war was over. 
Skill and strength and sweetness shme from 
the pictures of Aunt Molly that still remam 
to us— Aunt Molly at her loom, weavmg 
enough each day to pay the men employed 
by her husband to tunnel through Green 
Pond Mountain; Aunt Molly grown al- 
most blind, yet knitting by night stoclangs 
for her grandchildren; and Aunt Molly, 
cooking day after day through the season 
a kettle of corn in the fireplace, to give a 
treat to the children in the nearby school- 
house. _ , ^-..„ , 

Had John Leach lived on Quaker Hill, he 
would have had no such romantic experi- 
ence Most of his fellow citizens, however, 
belonged to the same stock as Putnam and 
Hale and Jonathan Trumbull, and believed 
as honestly in the duty of defence as John 
Leach in the evils of rebellion. A goodly 
number of men went out from the little 
town in answer to the nation's call. Jona- 
than Giddings, who lived on the northern 
border line of the township, was an officer 
in the army, valiant and resourceful. Sent 
into the enemy's country at the head of a 
scouting party, he was for nine days with- 
out any food save roots and herbs. No 
doubt he could have had plenty of game for 

II 



the shooting, but the firing of a gun would 
have betrayed him to the enemy. Jona- 
than's cousin and neighbor, William Gid- 
dings, who was a captain in the Revolution- 
ary army, received his commission from 
General Washington. A commissary in the 
army, Stephen Barnes, who lived on what 
is now the Alexander Barlow place, was 
intrusted with colonial funds and had a mil- 
lion dollars of continental currency in his 
possession when it was discredited by the 
government. He was once captured by the 
British and taken into camp, where the sol- 
diers proceeded to pump him for informa- 
tion about the colonial forces. When he re- 
fused to answer, they began pricking him 
with their bayonets, but Stephen Barnes 
unflinchingly kept silence. If the Britons 
thought the bayonet could weaken the loy- 
alty of these ''yeoman soldiers," they knew 
not yet the men they were dealing with. 

Not all the patriotic service was given 
on the battlefield. According to the records 
of Connecticut during the Revolution, Alex- 
ander Stewart, of the north parish of New 
Fairfield, was for several terms chairman of 
the Committee of Safety and Correspond- 
nece; this committee was *'to collect and 
care for certain stores and munitions of 
war and to deliver them at certain points 
as directed by the Governor and his coun- 
cil." Alexander Stewart himself had charge 
of some of the stores, and kept them in the 
garret of his house, a large two-story man- 
sion with much carving, said to be the most 
pretentious in the district. This house was 



torn down within the last century, and an- 
other, where Mr. George Barnum now hves, 
was built over the same cellar. It is be- 
lieved that some of the lead stored in the 
old attic came from the leaden statue of 
King George the Third on Bowling Green, 
which was torn down after the signing of 
the Declaration of Independence, moved to 
Litchfield, Connecticut, by woodpath and 
byway, perhaps through New Fairfield or 
over Quaker Hill, and made into colonial 
bullets. 

About the Stewart house at night used 
to prowl spies from the old Tory Hole at 
Webatuck, for there was more or less sus- 
picion of the location of the stores. Under 
the sloping attic roof, however, the barrels 
of powder and bars of lead were safe from 
all but the mischievous ten-year-old of the 
family, little Tom, whose delight it was to 
appropriate slivers of lead for sinkers and 
grains of powder for his horn. Brigadier 
General Henry S. Turrill, who is authority 
for most of these facts about Alexander 
Stewart, tells also a legend of the boy's in- 
ventiveness, which stopped effectively the 
meddling with the stores. The father, go- 
ing away from home one day, left the boys 
to split \^rood, promising them that they 
might go fishing when the task was done. 
It wa? hard to split logs with those magni- 
ficent trout waiting for them up in the 
''Wintergreen Woods," and little Tom sug- 
gested to the other boys that the powder in 
the garret would bring a speedy release. 
By knocking up a hoop on one of the bar- 



13 



rels, and making a small hole in the side, 
a piece of wire could be pushed in, and a 
tiny stream of powder forced out. After 
the hoop was knocked down, no one was 
the wiser for the leaking of the powder. 
The little lads overdid the matter, however, 
and so heavily did they charge the first log 
that the woodpile was scattered all over 
the yard and three lengths of new fence 
were utterly destroyed. 

The most stirring period of the Revolu- 
tion to the towns of western Connecticut 
was the time of the burning of Danbury. 
In Danbury was stored a large share of 
Connecticut's ammunition, and to destroy 
this General Tryon came with two thousand 
men from New York and fired the town, 
marching back to the shore with such 
plunder and burning and massacre that 
General Howe declared the raid disgraceful 
to the name of Briton. With the invasion 
of Danbury, mounted messengers were sent 
post haste to the towns roundabout, asking 
for help, and a special despatch to Alex- 
ander Stewart ordered the removal of the 
stores in his charge to the patriot camp at 
Peekskill. The summons was not in vain, 
for with the very spirit of "Old Put," men 
and boys were ready to leave their plows 
in the balmy April weather if their country 
needed them. Alexander Stewart's eldest 
son, a boy of twenty, went with the rest, 
leaving at home his fair young bride of four 
months. Any but a man of resources would 
have been in despair over the Peekskill de- 
spatch, for all of the men and most of the 



horses available had gone to the defense of 
Danbury. Alexander Stewart, however, 
was equal to the occasion, and mustering all 
the oxcarts he could find, he loaded them 
with ammunition. In the soft hush of the 
April twilight, the sleepy twitter of the 
birds and the fragrant peacefulness of the 
springtime at strange variance with the 
tragic rumors from Danbury, the little pro- 
cession moved slowly up the north road, 
past William Henry Taber's, and across 
Quaker Hill, toward the Peekskill camp, 
where the stores were safely delivered. 

Through the north part of the township, 
called in early days New Dilloway, runs 
perhaps the most historic bit of road in 
town. By its side stood Roger Sherman's 
shoe shop, where this boy of twenty made 
and mended shoes in quiet preparation for 
the glorious work before him. Stretching 
from the the New York State line to the 
Wimisink brook, it passed the homes of 
Captain Joseph Giddings of the French and 
Indian war. of Captain William Giddings, 
and of the valiant scout, Jonathan Giddings. 
As it lay in the sunshine it must have been 
a silent witness to the farewells of these 
gallant soldiers as they went away to fight 
their country's battles. The proudest day 
the road ever knew, however, was the brac- 
ing October afternoon in 1778, when Wash- 
ington and his army came marching down 
from Quaker Hill on their way to Boston 
town. Their day's march was almost done 
and a mile or so farther on, just over the 
line in Gaylordsville, they halted for the 



15 



night, Washington and his officers in the 
tavern kept by Deacon Benjamin Gaylord, 
and the body of the army in the fields near- 
by. It is beheved they encamped there sev- 
eral days. Jonathan Giddings's wife Mary 
could show her patriotism as effectively at 
home as Jonathan on the field, by baking 
bread for the army. With six vigorous 
young children, the eldest twelve and the 
youngest two, this sweet Revolutionary 
dame must have found those days in early 
November all too short for the tasks to be 
accomplished in them. If those were Jona- 
than's scouting days, no doubt the young 
wife sighed as she despatched the fresh 
brown loaves to the encampment over the 
river and vainly longed that some of them 
might find their way to her hungry soldier 
far in the enemy's country. 

In the Gaylord Tavern, Lafayette and 
Rochambeau are also said to have been en- 
tertained. About one minute's walk south 
of this building, which is still wonderfully 
well preserved, stands a magnificent oak 
tree, where, according to tradition, Wash- 
ington halted on his line of march, to ad- 
mire no doubt its wondrous symmetry and 
''patient strength," its ''gnarled stretch," 
and" depth of shade." Never did he fail 
to appreciate the glory and grandeur of 
beautiful trees. 

Aside from Revolutionary reminders, 
there are other quieter landmarks which 
stand for the beginnings of a New England 
town. One of these is the old tavern at the 
center, now Mr. Henry Briggs's house, 

i6 



which was both postoffice and hotel, the 
center of information in the Httle town. 
Here were posted notices of all kinds, here 
the stage stopped for refreshment on its 
weekly trip between New Milford and 
Poughkeepsie, and here the people gathered 
to get the weekly newspaper and rare let- 
ters and to hear the news that stage and 
traveler brought. Here also came traveling 
showmen, exhibiting occasionally in the 
great ballroom. Mrs. Laura Stuart Sher- 
wood remembers going to this tavern to see 
a display of waxworks, walking the mile 
from home alone at the mature age of five. 
The day was memorable for the new pair 
of green morocco shoes she wore and the 
new plaid linen dress, home spun, home 
woven, and home made, from home raised 
flax. Ranged on all sides of the ballroom 
the wax figures went through their mar- 
velous representations of the Sleeping 
Beauty, Captain Cook devoured by the Can- 
nibals, Pocahontas Saving the Life of John 
Smith, and above all, the Witch of Endor 
raising Samuel from the Dead. The life- 
like images of the awful-looking witch and 
the gray-bearded patriarch made this scene 
of Old Testament history more real than 
any other to the eyes of the five-year-old 
child. 

Of the days of tavern, turnpike and toll- 
gate, Sherman has a lasting reminder in the 
pass at the foot of Briggs Hill, known as 
the Narrows, a precipice of rock on each 
side of a narrow road, where all travelers 
paid their toll. No wonder the visitor from 



17 



New York State said that Yankees knew 
where to put a toUgate, for one could 
neither run past this nor go by it, and could 
never get out of paying his sixpence per 
horse everj^ time he went over the road. 
The first stage-driver on the Poughkeepsie 
turnpike was Captain Elihu Stuart, whose 
typical old-time coach was modeled after 
Washington's, well braced in front and 
rear, and swung on each side with stout, 
swaying straps of leather. Four horses he 
drove, the leaders, a brown and a bay, 
named Morris and old Jack, and the other 
two a team of grays named Trotter foot and 
Charlie. In the days of the last stage- 
driver, Isaiah McKibbin, the trip was tri- 
weekly, McKibbin leaving Poughkeepsie 
every other morning and returning the next 
night, spending the night between in New 
Milford. This man of the sturdy Scotch 
name had all the indomitable pluck of his 
sturdy Scotch blood. Through drifts and 
storms that would subdue anyone else he 
could break his way, and in a term of many 
years he is said to have missed but one 
trip. He is still remembered as a notable 
stage-driver of the olden type, large of fig- 
ure, florid of face, and ready of tongue, 
with a fund of stories to tell. Can any-" 
thing be more picturesque than an old-time 
journey in a swaying, four-horse coach, 
through fresh country air sweet with cinna- 
mon roses and clove pinks, over the hills 
and valleys we know so well, with a jolly, 
gossipy driver to beguile the long miles by 
fascinating stories, and at the end of the 

i8 



day a night of rest in the great, curtained 
four-poster of some country tavern? 

Another place which should be kept in 
memory is the level field at the center in 
front of Charles McDonald's house, where 
training and general muster were held. Ac- 
cording to the New England custom, every 
man was compelled to train for the militia 
under penalty of fine, and each town had 
its company, which was annually reviewed 
and drilled. In the words of an old-time 
song: 

"The first Monday ii» May 

Is Training Day, 
And nothing can be grander; 

Brother Bill 

Is corporill, 
And father, he's commander." 

In the autumn came regimental training or 
general muster, held in a different place 
each year, a regular circuit being made of 
the towns in the district. Town and dis- 
trict officers and sometimes state officers 
were there, as well as many spectators, in- 
cluding the families of the military men and 
guests from out of town. In 1830 general 
muster was held in Sherman. The stirring 
sounds of fife and drum, the superb horses 
of the officers, the gorgeous uniforms of the 
men — red-banded blue coats, white trous- 
ers, and stiff cockade hats — and the march- 
ing and counter-marching and maneuvers 
of the battlefield must have made a real 
pageant to the quiet little town. Each com- 
pany sent rations for its men, and for the 
officers a sumptuous feast was spread in the 



19 



nearby tavern; General Hinman, Connecti- 
cut's commander of militia, being chief 
guest of honor. No picture of Training 
Day would be complete without mention of 
the gingerbread, which was as indispensable 
to Training Day as firecrackers to Fourth 
of July. In the memory of those who have 
known the festival still linger visions of 
those squares of gingerbread, creased across 
the top, glazed with molasses, sweet, spicy, 
and delicious. 

Like all Puritan towns, Sherman had a 
whipping posts and stocks, standing on the 
green near the center church, and used 
within the memory of one now living, Mrs. 
Sherwood, who tells of seeing, in her child- 
hood, a man tied to the post and whipped 
for the offence of stealing. The theft was 
not large, but "stealing was stealing in those 
days," and the punishment vigorously in- 
flicted by the inflexible old magistrate. 
Squire Beardsley. Mrs. Sherwood was but 
a child when the last transgressor was 
whipped at the post, yet the shrinking, 
cringing figure, turning and twisting under 
the smarting blows, is still a vivid picture 
after ninety years have passed. This same 
Squire Beardsley exacted the lawful fine for 
swearing, one dollar for every oath. There 
is a story told of one man who was so angry 
over the fine that he swore the harder; the 
old squire, however,, waited quietly until 
he subsided, and then cooly collected a pen- 
alty of three or four dollars for the second 
outbreak. 

The early church and schoolhouse are al- 



20 



ways landmarks in a new community, and 
though these have long ago been replaced 
in Sherman by more modern buildings, 
memory pictures of them still remain. The 
old church, across the road from the present 
Union Church at the center, was a typical 
Puritan house of worship — large, bare, un- 
heated, each pew square and roomy with 
a door at the end and a seat around the 
sides. In the high gallery sat the singers, 
bass in the south gallery, treble in the north, 
and tenor and counter together in the west. 
Everybody went to church in early days 
and the great meeting-house, holding prob- 
ably five or six hundred people, was well 
filled Sunday after Sunday. On foot, in 
lumber wagons, and on horseback the people 
came, to listen to two hour-long sermons, 
one at ten o'clock, the other at one. In 
winter they brought their foot-stoves and 
filled them in the noon intermission with 
coals from the neighboring houses, where 
they ate their luncheons. Over their lun- 
cheons they discussed the sermon thought- 
fully and reverently, with real interest and 
understanding, for theology was the topic 
of the people. The beautiful ministry of 
the beloved pastor, Rev. Maltby Gelston, is 
a cherished part of Sherman church history. 
Those were the days of a Puritan Sab- 
bath. From the going down of the sun on 
Saturday to the going down of the sun on 
Sunday, no unnecessary work was done, 
neither bootblacking nor shaving, nor need- 
less cooking ; no riding or driving permitted 
save the trip to church. Children were 



brought up in strictest regard for the Sab- 
bath, and any infringement on their part 
was ventured in fear and trembhng. Three 
httle Sherman people, going out into the 
orchard for apples one Puritan Sabbath day, 
though they wanted the apples very, very 
much, thought they must surely be as 
naughty as the mocking Hebrew children 
who said unto Elisha, ''Go up, thou bald- 
head," and so they set the youngest one, 
the little brother, to keep watch for the 
bears and give warning if they came out of 
the wood. 

Quaint as the old-time church was the 
first schoolhouse, with its rows of hard, 
straight slab benches on three sides of the 
room, its rough counters, parallel with the 
benches, for the children's books, and its 
great stone fireplace at the end. The school 
was large, made up of three-year-old babies 
learning their letters and grown young 
people mastering the problems of Daboll's 
arithmetic and the constructions of the Eng- 
lish reader. The mantle of Job must have 
been sorely needed by the young teacher, 
who received the princely salary of seventy- 
five cents or one dollar a week, and who 
taught, summer and winter, six days out of 
seven, with only one half-holiday in a fort- 
night and only four weeks vacation in the 
year. She had moral as well as mental 
charge of her little flock, and misdemeanors 
were promptly reported to her for punish- 
ment. Coming into this old-time school- 
house one day, a little three-year-old, who 
is a Chicago multi-millionaire now, solemnly 



22 



affirmed that one of the boys had been 
swearing. The teacher, grieved and sur- 
prised, asked what the boy had said, and the 
child answered, in a low, shocked voice: 

''Mudpuddle !" 

Of the high scholarship in those early 
days much might be said. Modern schools 
have no more brilliant pupils than the little 
fellow, trained in this country schoolhouse, 
who went through Daboll's arithmetic at 
six, and was called years after by one who 
knew him in his college course, the bright- 
est man in Yale. 

Firmly laid in the plain bare schoolhouse 
were the foundations of learning and cul- 
ture, by bright, conscientious teachers. One 
who faithfully taught the little ones their 
A. B. C's and the older ones their rhetoric 
and logic was afterward Connecticut's wise 
and honored Governor Andrews. 

Perhaps more important than all the rest, 
because at the root of all, are the early 
homes, those Puritan homes of vigor and 
vitality, simplicity and strength, honor and 
uprightness. Dear to our hearts to-day is 
the slightest plenishing of a house of the 
olden time, whether it be the bit of blue 
china, the heirloom of silver, the fiddleback 
chair, the grandfather's clock, or the spin- 
ning-wheel, that has seen the people and 
the life we can only read and write and 
wonder about. The very houses are at- 
tractive, bare and empty though some of 
them may be. Great fireplaces and capa- 
cious brick ovens still tell the story of the 
old-time hospitality, and the great rooms 



23 



seem to thrill even yet with the happy, busy 
stir of the throng of children who had their 
work to do even then, and were brought up 
in the way they should go, trained in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord. Some 
of them worked for the nation in after 
years, helping to make the world wiser and 
better and safer, and a few have gained 
more or less distinction. 

Thus Ammi Giddings, born on his 
grandfather's homestead, living afterward 
in Ohio, was clerk of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, member and president pro tem 
of the Senate, and Justice of the Supreme 
Court of Montana. Marsh Giddings, who 
went from Sherman to Michigan in his boy- 
hood, was appointed Consul General to In- 
dia by President Grant, but refused the 
appointment; he was afterward made Gov- 
ernor of New Mexico, and was said to 
have filled the trust "with great credit to 
himself and the people of the territory." 
Franklin Giddings, born in the old tavern 
at the center when it was kept by his grand- 
father, Revilo Fuller, is professor of soci- 
ology at Columbia University, a man of 
whom we have a right to be proud. Only 
the other day a Japanese student in America 
gave the name of Professor Giddings as 
one of the six Americans best known and 
most admired in Japan ; when asked which 
of the six he considered the greatest, he 
answered: "Professor Giddings." Profes- 
sor Giddings was invited several years ago 
to deliver a course of lectures at the Uni- 
versity of Tokio. Of his sociological books 



24 



at least one has been translated into Japan- 
ese, French, Russian, Spanish, Bohemian 
and Hebrew. Philo Penfield Stewart, a 
grandson of Alexander Stewart, went as a 
missionary to the Choctaw Indians in Mis- 
sissippi when he was twenty-three years old, 
making the horseback journey alone 
through two thousand miles of wilderness. 
Though he refused to accept any salary 
from the Board, he was called the most 
useful man on the field, his Yankee skill 
helping in many ways, especially by con- 
structing a grist mill to grind the corn, 
which before this the children in the school 
had pounded in mortars. After coming 
back to the East he invented the Stewart 
stove, from which, it is said, everything of 
value in the modern cooking stove is taken. 
The story of his struggle and poverty be- 
fore the stoves were put upon the market, 
sometimes his only fare being corn meal 
and water, sounds like the life story of in- 
ventors the world over. When the tide 
turned and his hands were filled with money 
he sought the best possible use for it. So 
it came about that he founded Oberlin Col- 
lege, a pioneer institution in co-education, 
manual training, and open doors to the col- 
ored race. Oberlin is the mother of twenty 
other colleges, and more than twenty thou- 
sand students have gone in and out at her 
doors and called her blessed. As pioneer 
missionary, abolitionist, inventor, philan- 
thropist, and founder of Oberlin, Philo Pen- 
field Stewart brings lasting honor upon the 
town of his birth. 



25 



The church and the school and the early- 
homes are our landmarks and our pride. 
Of the Puritan type and the Puritan stock, 
they yet belong to a day when Puritanism 
was mellowing into a broader toleration, 
though losing none of its grandeur and 
principle, relaxing a little in judging the 
neighbor's deed, but abating not at all in 
the standard set for self. 

The Puritan and the Quaker dwelt side 
by side, one in the valley, the other on the 
hilltop. In outward forms they differed, 
but in the great things of men's souls they 
were not far apart. So long as we who 
come after them live our faith as they lived 
theirs, in love to God and goodwill to man, 
the future of Quaker Hill and of Sherman 
will be as glad and beautiful as the past has 
been strong and heroic. 



26 



LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 



014 076 293 3 # I 



\ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 076 293 3 % 



